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Dr. Giovacchini's paper left me with an uneasy sense of perplexity. This is in no way due to any lack of clarity in his exposition of his thesis. I did, however, come away from his paper with that characteristic experience of a double-take: I began to question whether there is, beyond the explicit propositions developed in the paper, an implicit thesis that constitutes the real challenge presented to psychoanalytic thinking. After rereading the paper, I became ever more convinced that there is an explicit and an implicit set of theses presented in this paper. I shall explain my reasons for making such a differentiation:
The explicit themes of Dr. Giovacchini's paper are clearly stated in his summary: (1) Regression during psychoanalytic threatment constitutes an important therapeutic potential. (2) As the patient's ego regresses to a state approximating the preverbal, neonatal ego, the sense of time and of identity undergo regressive changes. (3) The psychotherapeutic process accomplishes by means of interpretation a restructuralization of the personality. It is the verbal quality of interpretations that leads to ego structure, and therefore to a restructuring of time and identity experience.
These propositions appear unexceptionable. As a matter of fact, it is their very unexceptionableness that makes one wonder why Dr. Giovacchini considers it important to restate them.2 The tenor
of his presentation does not permit, however, to accept his paper simply as a reiteration of previously described observations. The paper conveys the idea that something new, hitherto unrecognized, is being communicated. We must therefore look for a thesis that, while not expressly stated, is nevertheless implied. It seemed to me that the ke